BAREILLY: Bareilly has got a mobile van, known as ‘National Mobile Medical Unit’, and is going to get three more by the next week for providing primary health services in villages that are currently underserved. The mobile vans will cover more than 700 villages located far from primary health centres (PHCs) and community health centres (CHCs).

Bareilly district has around 1,900 villages. Over 700 of these do not have PHCs or CHCs. Residents of most of these villages have to cover a distance of over 30 kilometres to reach the nearest health centre or hospital. The mobile vans will be conducting camps in these villages to provide for the medical needs of the residents. Experts said that a mobile van will have an MBBS doctor, a pharmacist, a lab technician and a staff nurse. It will also have the facility of conducting X-ray, ultrasound, electrocardiogram (ECG) and pathological tests.

Dr Vineet Shukla, chief medical officer, said that they have received one mobile van and a schedule of villages has been prepared that the van will be visiting from Saturday. Each mobile van will have a doctor and paramedical staff, who will give medicines to the patients and conduct general tests. The aim is to take healthcare to the doorsteps of people. He added that they will receive three more mobile vans by next week.

Abhishek Tyagi, district coordinator, National Mobile Medical Unit, said that the service will be beneficial to the patients as it will save their time and money. He added that the vans will have laptops and printers, and they would be able to provide hand to hand reports of general tests. Critical patients will be referred to hospitals for better treatment.

According to the National Health Mission, the mobile vans will provide primary healthcare in areas like mental illness, neonatal and infant health, child and adolescent health, management of common communicable diseases and basic OPD services, dental care and eye/ENT care. (TNN)